Well, it's the end of my first week taking part in NaNo. I think it's safe to say that I've gotten off to a pretty good start. I decided to make my daily goal 3000 words, and so far I'm right on track. 3000 is high for a daily goal. To reach 50k by the end of the month, one only needs to write 1667 words.
I chose a high goal for a couple reasons. The first is because I know there will be days in which I won't get as much done or may not write at all, and I want to give myself a cushion. The next, and more important reason, is because I actually want to finish this draft by the end of November, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be longer than 50k.
Even though I have a rough outline in my head, I'm not quite sure how long it's going to be. As long as it doesn't turn out to be 250k like my last WIP, then I think I'm good shape. I have much more of an outline for this project (even if it is only in my head) than I did the last one, so I don't think radioactive word count will be an issue. (Please, please don't let it be an issue.)
Since this is my first time participating, I want to share a few of my thoughts so far. First, I'm amazed at how refreshing this feels. It is so freeing to just sit down and write a chapter and push aside the feelings that it might not be good enough. I write a chapter, skim it for typos and only typos (I'm very strict about this) and then move on. I know I'll have to change things later, but it feels so good just to get stuff down.
While I'm writing I have three other documents open. One for characters, one for things to be researched later, and another just titled notes, which is pretty much anything that doesn't fall into the other two categories. Anytime I think of something I need to look up, fix about a character, or expand upon, I make a note in one of the documents and just keep on writing. I feel like this will help prepare me for the second draft, which I'm already really excited to write, because I am loving this story even more than I thought I would. More about that later.
Another thing I'm enjoying about this is the sense of community I'm feeling from social media sites. So many people are doing NaNo and while writing is an introverted activity, it's neat to be a part of something that so many other people are doing at the same time.
I'm having so much fun, I think I'm going to have to do this every year.
Total word count for week one: 22,777 (I feel like that's got to be lucky.)
No comments:
Post a Comment